I think we all know the answers to those are "fuÑk all" and "tiny", adding up to "not enough to justify the excessive cost of the server". But you don't expect Carlos to come out and admit that do you?

Considering how long iDevGames has been around, he's probably on an older, more expensive hosting plan. If he were to migrate to another host he'd probably be able to find a (much) better deal (assuming he's never switched hosts and his current host hasn't bothered to adjust his bill with the change in technology and costs).

I get a 512MBram/12GBdisk/80GBbandwidth VPS for $12/month, so I'm pretty sure that there's some better deals to be had out there.

Quote:What makes anyone think MyBB is any more secure than phpBB or others?

Yes, that's a good question! I can look at the security alerts for different web apps. Sometimes they give insight. I base my opinion on hanging out in hosting forums, open source blogs/forums, etc. In general most hosting companies view phpbb as software that is often exploited/targeted by hackers.

The main criteria would be:
* security (so as not to get hacked)
* ability to migrate users and data
* keep most if not all functions that users are using
* have a backend that isn't insane for the admin to manage

I've used MyBB before and found that it met most of the above. I'm open to suggestions. To be honest, I don't know how well it scales for large databases, something that vBulletin has in general, been good about. Though I assume their community forum is doing OK.

Quote:how much traffic is the site actually getting, and how big is the database?

Hiya. There should be a thread with some site stats I think. Here is some more data for you.
Traffic = 78.4MB this month
(I'm not 100% certain of that number since they switched us to a new VPS and some statistical data might have been reset. I'll keep an eye on it and let you know more in a month or so)
Database (forum) = 78 MB (Doesn't sound like much for a local database on your Mac, but not so small for web forums IMHO.)
Disk space = 1.4GB

For web traffic... looks like we've been trending up since Jan.
From Jan 1...
54.31% % New Visits
00:01:40 Avg. Time on Site
610,164 Pageviews
355,346 Visits
Visitors from Search Engines 267,873.00 (75.38%)

For Jan only
129,880 Pageviews
74,689 Visits

OSC, I'm losing my patience with you. You are not happy, OK. But I don't need that type of language though. I say to anyone, 'If you are not happy, the internet is a large place. Good luck to you.' I value your knowledge and help to newbies, but I don't need constant negativity.

Quote:he's probably on an older, more expensive hosting plan

Hello, no I think we are on a good plan. VPS plan which also runs iDevApps and uDevGames. Plan or server specs isn't the issue.

Getting back to the topic at hand... In the past, I might make a decision to switch this or buy that. I am criticized. In this case, I am asking for opinions from everyone on what is best course of action in relation to our forum.

Recap...
We have used vBulletin for many years. It has been one of the best forums on the market and is widely used for large and commercial forums. However, they are heading in a direction that I (actually, a good number of licensees) aren't so keen on. The forum is getting to be a bit bloatware as they add CMS and other social networking stuff. We don't need the CMS part as I am extremely content with WordPress. The upgrade fees for Vbulletin in the past were somewhat reasonable.. But their new upgrade policy is asking for too much to go from our old version to the latest. So we have been running an old version that could be hacked any day. This thread was created to get feedback and advice on whether we should just bite the bullet and pay for the latest vBulletin, or if we should seek alternatives. My suggestion was MyBB, because it seems to have a decent migration script, it's free, the developers actively work on it, I don't hear horror stories about it, I have used it in the past. But like I said, I am very open to other forum software suggestions. If everyone says 'Carlos, use PhpBB', then I will. But before saying so, I want to make sure the person giving that advice has had experience running a forum of 1,000+ users. (i.e. one thing to run a small forum of you and your little brother... another story when it comes to making it run smooth with an active forum.)

Quote:I guess we'll never know....

Sorry for the late response Seth. My cat has been battling for his health as of late and so my mind was in another place...

I'm thinking that the best thing to do is install 2 or 3 forum programs in their own directories while keeping this forum online. I'll copy our data into each one. Then I will provide the URL of these forums. Then you all can judge for yourselves in terms of speed and features.

Carlos Camacho Wrote:I'm thinking that the best thing to do is install 2 or 3 forum programs in their own directories while keeping this forum online. I'll copy our data into each one. Then I will provide the URL of these forums. Then you all can judge for yourselves in terms of speed and features.

That sounds like a possible plan. Setting up a test site with a dupe of the forum would let you test run the installation process and catch a lot of the potential issues without risking the main forum until you're happy it's the one to use.

I have posted a test of MyBB at:http://www.idevgames.com/mybb/
I exported everything from this forum (vBulletin) and imported it into MyBB.
I was pleased about how smooth the migration script worked. I somewhat expected 'something' to not carry over, but it seemed to have worked well. I grabbed a similar theme (free) to our current one (commercial). It isn't perfect, so please don't focus too much on that. I'm interested to see if we have all our data and how will MyBB works. Try some searches.

Thus far, I only noticed avatars missing. I can copy those over or people could re-upload.
Obviously this is just a work in concept test, so don't post anything important to the test location.